Technology news

Drone owners are a dedicated bunch of hobbyists, and clearly have no issue spending quite a bit on their aircraft. Though it’s a touch on the expensive side, the Manfrotto D1 Drone Backpack is probably an accessory every drone owner should have. The D1 was designed for the DJI Phantom, but can fit any similarly sized drone. Its main compartment holds the drone, while a top pouch houses your remote. Another compartment further up is meant for a DSLR camera, but the compartments can be used

When Apple first introduced the MacBook, it was a massive technological leap forward. Its recent upgrade seemed incremental, especially when some are hoping for a new Pro. Many were confused by Apple’s move, and the prevailing thinking was that Apple simply offered up a spec bump to sell computers. As it turns out, the 2016 MacBook is actually pretty damn good. Hardware Externally, nothing’s changed from the 2015 version; it’s still slim, and there’s only one USB-C

Wiper, the app that clears encrypted conversations from your phone with a single button, is shutting down — or pivoting. We can’t tell. In an email to users, the company behind Wiper says it wants to focus on a new app named FreshTeam, which has the same functionality as Wiper — but adds group calling: It has the same chat, calling and erase features as Wiper. Plus free group calling up to 100 people and optional location sharing. The app has been pulled from Google Play

A new report from Flurry notes that of all the apps we have access to, those in the Health and Fitness categories on Google Play and in the App Store are the ones we rely on. Based on two metrics — use per week and 30-day retention — Flurry’s findings suggest health apps are only rivaled by weather or news. The lone failing of health apps is how often we tap into them, but that may be a poor metric to consider if we’re using wearables. With Apple Watch, the wearables mar

In the back-and-forth that is Google versus Oracle, lawyers for both sides are doing their diligence early on, but Oracle’s team may be serving up damage Google can’t recover from. The lawsuit itself regards Android, which is widely used and written in Java, a language created by Sun Microsystems. When Oracle purchased Sun, it acquired Java as well as all its various APIs — which are copyrighted. To that, Oracle is claiming Google has no right to use Java APIs for Android, whi

Project Spark, Microsoft’s odd ‘make your own’ game, is shutting down. No longer available for download, Project Spark will vanish completely this August when its servers are shut off. If you’re unfamiliar, Spark was a bit like Minecraft or Mario Maker, except it promised to go way beyond 8-bit graphics or side-scrolling play. It let players create in-game objects and characters — or tweak what had been created already. In a blog post announcing the shutd

Running out of space on your MacBook? Thanks to the TarDisk 64GB MacBook Drive Expansion, you can put an end to the frustration of deleting files to free up spare GBs. For a limited time on TNW Deals, you can add 64GB of storage to your existing drive at 32 percent off, and avoid system sluggishness as well as that insufferable “startup disk almost full” notification. TarDisk is made from an aluminum alloy, fitting snugly into your Mac’s SDXC port to give the storage boost you

For the writer wanting to focus on their work rather than Twitter, there’s a plethora of internet-blocking software offering ‘distraction free writing’. There’s even a writing gadget to help people shut out the social media mind clutter. Coming to a hipster bar near you, the Freewriter is a retro-styled electronic writing machine without Wi-fi. A typewriter with a plug essentially. But why, if we claim to love writing should we need distraction-free gadgetry in the first

In the past decade, there’s been a steady breakdown of democracy in America. Between Donald Trump’s demagoguery, ongoing government-sanctioned mass surveillance, and an electoral process dictated by media and money, even the concept of democracy is dangerously open to interpretation. Data, that lauded harbinger of mathematical accuracy and scientific truth, seems like a simple way to pierce through the deception. Data analytics, after all, has already changed various facets of the p